More stories from CNBC.com

Related Stories

Colleges That Bring in the Highest Paychecks

Location, prestige, academic reputation, and tuition are major factors for students in the college selection process, but post-graduation salary is rarely taken into consideration.

Although salaries depend heavily on a graduate’s field of work, companies are willing to pay a premium for students hailing from the country’s top universities. But which undergraduate institutions offer the most valuable degrees?

Recently, Payscale.com released a report on the highest salary potential among 1,058 of the nation’s colleges. Based on this data, colleges and universities can be ranked by the mid-career median salaries of its graduates.

For schools with the same mid-career median salaries, starting median salary determines their relative rank. In the case of a tie in this number, the school with the higher starting salary is ranked higher.

The ranking considered only people with undergraduate degrees, which ruled out post-graduate degree holders, such as lawyers and medical and pharmacy professionals.

Of the following top 10 highest earning schools, their graduates earn an average of $122,500 at mid-career, which is up nearly 5 percent over last year.

As a few points of comparison, the bottom 10 schools’ graduates earn an average of $44,490 at mid-career, and the top party school by salary potential is University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) with a mid-career salary of $95,900.